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“I’m a few months from thirty, and everyone needs a break. If you could go anywhere in the world right now, if everything around you could just pause for a moment, where would you go?”
“Paris.”
“No kidding?”
“Why are you so surprised?”
“I don’t know, most people would say somewhere with a beach.”
“Not me. I’ve always wanted to go. See the Eiffel Tower, visit the Moulin Rouge, eat my weight in crepes.”
“I’d like to see that last one.”
“I bet you would. How about you? Where would you go?”
“I’d take you on that trip to Paris.”
A smile catches me and for a moment—a single moment—I feel like a little girl. Giddy and love-struck. It reminds me of the way I felt when I first met Shepherd.
“Come on,” Kellan pivots from the path and gestures me onto a dilapidated pier known as Piper’s Pier. The rotted planks extend fifty feet into the lake and ends with a T, where fishermen often spend entire days. Today, it is vacant.
Together, we walk to the end and peer into the murky, black water.
“How many dead bodies do you think are in there?” he asks.
“A lot. More than you’d think.”
“Why do you say that?”
“There’s a strong undercurrent that runs through this area of the lake, swallowing up and carrying debris all the way to the center, which drops almost three hundred feet deep, and is about a mile wide.”
“So you’re saying it’s a perfect place to get rid of evidence.”
“Exactly.”
“Should we send divers out?”
“And tell them to look for a four-inch surgical scalpel that severed Alyssa’s eyeballs? No. Not yet. Let’s get more solid information first.” I take a deep breath and a shudder catches me. “God, what a creepy murder.”
“Tell me about it.”
I stare at my reflection in the water, distorted and dark. A chill rolls up the back of my spine. Suddenly, I want nothing more than to get away from the water. I grab Kellan’s arm. “Come on, let’s go, we’ve got work to do.”
Once back on the shoreline, Kellan pauses to squint at the houses in the distance, barely visible through the trees.
“Is that the neighbor’s house? Amos Hoyt?”
I frown, look from left to right to get my bearings, then study the piece of the large brick home I can see through a narrow break in the trees. I can just make out the deck that extends from the master bedroom—the one speckled with binoculars and marijuana joints.
“Yeah, I think it is his house.”
“Let’s go talk to him.”
“No, let’s check on Hoffman first. He’s expecting us.”
“No, I want to meet this mystery Hoyt guy. He’ll see us at the Kaings’. I want to drop in when he’s not expecting us.”
I fist my hands on my hips. “You think he did it, don’t you?”
